Work Text:
Though she was reticent at first, working at Common Ground Coffee has become Kara’s pride and joy.
The Danvers have owned the place since before she even knew them. It’s a small establishment, located right downstairs from their apartment; a russetty-red brick storefront nestled between short, stocky buildings in the quaintest street of downtown National City. Its paneled walls, colorful tables, and dark, cozy floors are imbued with fond memories: riding out a thunderstorm with a steaming hot chocolate and Alex by her side, drawing silly doodles on clients’ cups to make them smile, sneaking a lick of the butter and sugar on her fingers as Eliza taught her how to make her signature Danishes… However, when the time came for Kara to step into the legacy of bakers and baristas that the Danvers upheld, she wasn’t entirely convinced she’d be a particularly apt candidate. Standing for hours behind the bar, uttering the same predictable script and performing the same robotic motions over and over and over again?
Yeah. Not for her.
But then the end of senior year came, along with her NCU acceptance letter, and a little cog in her brain shifted towards practicality. Her tuition would not pay itself. Really, she’d be stupid to pass up the interview-less, trial-less, first-time-in-a-new-environment-awkwardness-less hire. So, a quick talk with Eliza later, an apron with her name in blue-and-red cursive embroidered on its top left corner was in her hands.
Turns out, being a nepotism-supported barista does have its perks. The most otherworldly quiet of the lull in activity after a rush hour, the mischievous delight of relishing a wrong milk latte or a perfectly zesty muffin that’s been accidentally left to toast, the odd spark of connection with the guy wearing a Starfleet shirt, the octogenarian couple who both won bodybuilding national titles in their youth. Kara’s favorite, though, is the easy, warm flow of hanging out in the very back corner of the kitchen during her Friday evening break, which she almost always uses to eat dinner while talking to Lena—who usually arrives straight from school—at the little table under the high window that overlooks the vine-covered back alley.
“Anyway, it’s not that interesting,” Kara tells her, looking down a bit, mouth full of sourdough and cheese and prosciutto, as she crosses her legs on her plastic chair. “It turns out Edge was using gen AI to grade the class’s papers—"
“Ew.”
“—so that’s why they’re planning a strike until they get fair consideration for their work. I still need to double check with my sources before I get approved for publication, though.”
“Kara,” Lena says earnestly, leaning forward on the table so her earnest eyes match Kara’s. “Don’t— That’s prime-time news information; don’t downplay your work that way.”
Kara chuckles softly, more mirthless than not. Most people on campus love Edge. “I hope other people think that, too.” She takes another bite, then, as she chews, a memory comes to mind. “Wasn’t your first active practice today? How was it?”
“Oh,” Lena answers, tucking her hair behind her ear a bit abashedly. “It was quite boring. They had us fix buggy code in their X-ray machines.”
Kara snorts, narrowing her eyes skeptically. “Right.”
Lena’s been interning at a subsidiary of Wayne Biotech, the second biggest surgical tech company after Luthor Corp, for two weeks, now, and all she’s shared about her work is that she spends all her five hours sitting in front of a computer. Kara has been sensing that there’s some bigger detail Lena’s not sharing with her—after all, she’s Lena Luthor, and if Lena Luthor’s known for something, that is rightfully boasting about any and all breakthroughs her genius brain has achieved—but, even after endless day-thinking sessions and a couple late nights spilling her twisted-up heart out to Alex, Kara still cannot crack what it is. If she’s being very honest with herself, it’s starting to make her feel a little uneasy. Has she done something to drive Lena away?
“You know,” Kara tells her, picking at the last bite of sandwich still left in her hand, “you can tell me, like, the nitty-gritty of what you’re doing. I might not get everything, but I… I mean, I care about what you’re—"
“Kara!” Alex comes into the kitchen, all but slamming the wooden door open against the kitchen tile. “Your break’s been over for fifteen minutes; the line’s almost to the door!”
“I’m coming, just— This is crucial information.”
Alex rolls her eyes as she leaves. Kara’s lucky to be her sister: if she didn’t know Alex has spent more lazy afternoons than she’d ever admit to making out with her girlfriend, Sam, in this very room, her stomach would drop with dread at the thought that that use of hyperbole was literal.
“Anyway,” she tells Lena once Alex is gone. “I care about what you’re doing.”
Lena smiles softly at that, but something in her eyes stays far away, almost sad. “I know.”
For a moment, Kara feels the urge to outright ask if everything’s okay. If she’s unknowingly said anything that’s crossed her, that’s broken her trust. Lena’s one of the people she cherishes most—and as such, Kara knows she’s out to be handled with care. She can hear the steamy whoosh of Alex using the espresso machine outside, though, and, really, she’d rather leave the night on a high note than open her big mouth and sour the air until she can see her next.
“Well,” she manages to say, hoping she can find a better way to broach the topic soon. “I should probably head out front.” She stands up, reaches for her apron, on a hook next to the pantry door, and ties it around her waist. “I went over by thirty minutes last week while writing my essay for Lit III, so I’ve got zero strikes left until Alex comes in and actually chokes me.”
Lena chortles. “Let’s hope she chooses peace.”
“Oh! I almost forgot,” Kara says, rushing across the room to pull out something from the fridge. She heads back to the table and hands it to Lena, who, after standing up, accepts it with a knowing, soft look on her face. “For the ride.”
In her hand now rests a plastic cup filled with a marbled light brown drink. On the side is a drawing of a groovy, long-limbed furry monster with a caption that, in funky caps, reads: Put yo hands up, it’s the weekend!
“It’s French vanilla with almond milk,” Kara supplies, the corners of her lips pinching slightly up.
Lena smiles too, soft and bright and unfairly gorgeous. “Thank you.”
Kara looks down and reaches up to rub her cheek. It’s ridiculous, how randomly flustered that smile makes her feel. She takes a small breath, trying to regain control of her wobbly belly, and then bites her lip, hesitant. “Are you coming to the movies with us tomorrow?” she asks, a sudden recall that blares with need for reassurance, given that it’s finally the weekend, and all.
Lena opens her mouth to reply, but then her eyes widen as if she hadn’t remembered their week-long planning until this very moment.
“What?” Kara asks, a cold pang weighing down her gut.
“I can’t,” Lena says, genuinely contrite. She brings her other hand up, starts fidgeting with one of her fingers over the condensation of the cup. “I’m sorry. I completely forgot and I scheduled an extra shift at the lab.”
Something inside Kara’s chest squeezes tight. “Oh.” She tucks the locks of hair that have come loose from her ponytail behind her ears. “It’s okay. You… You know, you’ve got lives to save.”
Alex cracks open the door again. “Kara, if you’re not here in thirty seconds I’m telling mom you purposely fucked up three pretzels today!”
Kara huffs, mentally scrambling for any scraps of fortitude to push her bubbling anxiety aside, and Lena chuckles half-heartedly.
“Have fun,” she says, and Kara manages a small, tight-lipped smile.
***
“Okay, let’s go,” Kara says when she gets into the passenger seat, avoiding Alex’s gaze by turning to shut the door at her side and haphazardly fasten her seatbelt.
Inside, all Kara can hear is the low rumble of the other cars on the road, the murmur of the occasional passerby. She stares at the road ahead, waiting for Alex to turn on the engine.
A second passes, two, three. Kara turns to look at her sister, mouth open to ask what’s taking her so long, but the words halt in her throat when she sees the look on her face: brows furrowed deeply, eyes narrowed, suspiciously searching. She and Lena have come a long way since the mutual distrust Lex caused between them years ago when they first met, but if the intent way she’s scrutinizing Kara’s face is anything to go by, her big sister spidey senses are prickling at the current weirdness in the air.
“I thought Lena was coming,” she says. “Are we—”
Before any suggestions can make it into the air, Kara shakes her head. “She’s… uh, she’s at the lab.”
“Oh.” Alex slumps back in her seat, seemingly a bit relieved. She grabs the keys from their spot at the cupholder below the stereo, puts them into the ignition. “Well, I hope she can get out of it next time. We’ll have to rent this one later or something.”
“Yeah,” Kara answers, though an awful, cold, quivery coil slithers in her belly as she does.
The rest of the night, gloomily munching on buttery popcorn under the glaring glow of the movie screen, the only thing she can think of is how much she wishes she could read Lena’s mind.
***
There’s a heavy downpour outside—rainwater falls in rowdy rivulets on the other side of Kara’s room’s window, blurring the view into glassy blobs of green and beige and gray. She feels for Alex, stuck in the puddly traffic on her way home from dinner out with Sam and their friends, but she also feels quite grateful for the gloomy weather. She’s put on her softest, warmest, coziest fleece PJs; she’s made a steamy cup of tea and arranged a plate of sparkly sugar cookies on the side; she’s got the room’s lights down moody and low; and she’s written almost a full new page of smooth, coherent thoughts. Really, what else could a girl who must turn in this five-thousand-word essay by the end of the week ask for?
Her laptop keys click in unison with the raindrops on the glass, creating an oceanic rhythm that settles her, makes her insides feel like a summer sunset at the beach. She’s starting to smile at the screen, mid clever sentence and cookie bite to boot, when her idyllic bubble is popped by her NSYNC ringtone.
She jumps a bit, then rolls her eyes as she gets up, walks to her bed. Just when she was getting into the flow. When she flops belly down on the mattress to check it, though, Lena’s bright, smiling face graces her screen.
A frantic flutter shows up in Kara’s belly when she picks up.
“Hi!” she says, zealously. It’s been a bit, what with midterms and study sessions and Lena’s flourishing internship, and all. “What’s up?”
“I have news,” is all Lena says as a greeting, ever the pragmatist. Her voice sounds warm, light and bright.
“About—”
“The letter.”
Kara perks up. “Did you manage to get through to them?”
A short pause; it feels like ages. “Yes.”
“Lena!”
Lena giggles. Kara can picture her cheeks flushing, the adorable way she ducks her head when she gets flustered by her compliments. Kara’s smile has become so bright her cheeks hurt—getting the second biggest medical company in the country to invest in the implementation of nanobots for surgery is no small feat.
“Jeberg told me he’s never seen such a tight calculation for the hive, he couldn’t believe how someone so young had come up with it,” Lena tells her. “They won’t bring me in to start workshopping it until the start of next year, though, so… it’s a long wait, but it’s a thing. What?”
“Nothing,” Kara laughs, endeared by Lena’s suspicion of her three-second silence. “I’m ecstatic for you, that’s amazing! It’s just, I feel like we haven’t seen each other in forever. I missed hearing your voice.”
Lena sighs softly. She’s sensed a shift. “I promise I won’t disappear again,” she answers, a bit softer. “I hope I won’t have too much work over winter break.”
“You’ll find it regardless,” Kara counters, scoffing jocularly, and Lena laughs. Kara imagines her shaking her head, rolling her eyes charmingly. “How about we do brunch tomorrow to celebrate?” Kara continues, sitting up so her back’s leaning against her headboard. “We could go to Rosie’s and get cinnamon roll pancakes or something cool like that.”
“Not tomorrow.”
Kara blinks, then she sighs. Something hard and heavy tightens in her gut. “School?” she asks.
“Yeah. I… Well, I actually made a new friend at the lab.” There’s a plasticky rustle on the other side of the line. Maybe Lena’s sitting on the big leather chair in her study, swiveling slightly from side to side. “Her name’s Andrea,” she continues. “We were assigned together, and she’s sort of been interested in learning about my code, so she invited me to her place to study it.”
“Oh.” Kara’s brow furrows; she starts biting her thumbnail. “Um, okay. Well, Sunday, then?”
A breath on the other side, as if Lena was relieved. “Sunday’s perfect.”
They talk a bit more, about Kara’s homework and the books they’re reading and the like, but all throughout the rest of the phone call and even after they hang up, as she tries to resume her essay, Kara can’t concentrate on anything other than the new word Lena uttered.
Andrea.
She gets mad at her reaction, but she still cannot deny that something about the sheepish way Lena said it has made her heart curdle.
***
Turns out, Lena’s secretive nature regarding her internship was caused by none other than one Andrea Rojas.
Apparently, for some reason, Lena was afraid that being open about Andrea’s interest in befriending her would drive Kara away. After realizing Kara would not get angry at her being a normal master’s student and talking to her peers, though, she’s been sharing more and more about their budding relationship—seemingly, Andrea thought Lena was “a fascinating girl” ever since they met, and thus hasn’t missed a chance to laud her work and looks during their ever more frequent study meet-ups. Now, while riding the bus to the movies or sharing Friday evening dinner, virtually all of Kara and Lena’s conversations revolve around how Andrea is an unbelievable math whiz, or that Andrea’s planning to get a job at her father’s company after graduating, or when, during an outing downtown, Andrea bought Lena a skin-tight, off-shoulder, navy blue top because it would “bring out her eyes.”
On the one hand, Kara’s happy that Lena’s finally putting herself out there. She is—she’s been practically screaming at the world in hopes it’d wake up and see how wonderful Lena is, why wouldn’t she want it to relish the fact now? But, on the other, there’s something about Andrea’s… insistence that Kara can’t help being suspicious about. Yes, Lena talks about her quite often, but when she does, that odd, newly-ever-present tone of reticence and heartache drowns her voice like a suffocating cloud of black smoke. When Kara hears it, something hot and sharp tugs at her chest. What is this girl doing to make Lena so dejected? Is it because, perhaps, her project is going badly? Kara can definitely make Lena happy. So why can’t Lena just spend more time with her instead?
Last week, Kara was doing her nightly skincare and wondering why this new, otherwise unassuming friendship elicited such a heated reaction from her. The answer hit her alongside the cold water that splashed on her face.
She doesn’t hate Andrea. She doesn’t even know Andrea. She guesses, subconsciously, that she might possibly just want Lena—smart, kind, funny, beautiful Lena—to be… more than simply her best friend.
It made her heart skip a beat, her stomach flutter, turn to jelly. All night, she couldn’t push the thought out of her mind, and it hasn’t left since. Lena and her. She and Lena. Together. Of course!
Anyway, not that it matters. Kara isn’t stupid enough anymore to let her heart lead her blindly and ruin her most wonderful friendship with a word vomit of unrequited feelings.
She’s trying to reconcile the fact as she reads her book in progress—a romance story, no less—while sitting on the stool behind the register. It’s a tranquil day today: there’s nothing but empty tables and stools inside the shop, and the last customer that walked in did so over an hour ago; naturally, Kara figured she’d take advantage of the dead time by getting ahead of some homework and catching up on her hobbies. It’s no surprise, then, that she’s startled out of her novel when the door bell rings.
Her automatic customer service greeting is about to fall out of her lips as she lifts her head, only to halt at the sight of a heather-gray-wool-coat-clad Lena coming in through the door.
“Hey!” Kara says instead, bright and buzzy as she gets up from her seat and leans against the counter. She’s more eager to see Lena than to hear the hot details of the lab session with Andrea she was just at, but she still starts asking, “How did— What happened?”
She’s cut off by her stomach dropping at the sight of Lena’s expression. Instead of the oh-so-familiar glow of pride that most always livens her face up after she works, her features are dark and downcast, her shoulders are tight and slumped forward, and her cheeks are the distinct splotchy red of someone who’s been crying.
“Only that Andrea Rojas is a gargantuan fucking jackass.”
Kara blinks.
Then, she lets out an empathetic breath, lifting the counter-door to let Lena into the back of the bar. “You’re kidding,” she tells her as she pulls out a stool for her to sit in.
Lena does, rolls her eyes and shrugs as if she had nothing else to tell, as if that wholly-out-of-character statement were completely self-explanatory. “She’s a… spineless hack,” she adds. “I can’t believe I ever thought I’d found a partner in her.”
“Why?” Kara asks, leaning back on the corner of the counter to look at Lena.
“We were cleaning up to go. She said we should go grab dinner, and I agreed. On the way to the restaurant, she told me she’d shown our work to Jeberg’s boss and he congratulated her for her outstanding developments. He offered her early access to the hive, assisting with surgery. Just her.”
“Oh my god.”
Lena crosses her arms, looks down.
“It’s fine. It… It all was too good to be true, I should’ve—”
“No, it’s not fine.”
One of Kara’s hands moves forward almost automatically, lands on Lena’s forearm, covered in thick, fibrous fabric. The contact is almost electric; Kara considers pulling her hand away, but in a second, Lena’s eyes find hers, and the soft, syrupy gratitude nestled in those jade-green jewels makes the thick weight in her stomach turn into fluttery light. How she loves this stunning girl. How she wishes to make her feel better.
“She stole your work. Does the—”
“I called Jeberg. He said he’ll set things straight, and she’ll—”
There’s a sweet pang in Kara’s chest, urging her to make the wish real right now. She chooses to listen: she gives Lena’s forearm a squeeze, then pushes herself to her feet, moves towards the back of the space, where the coffee machines and toaster ovens are.
“What are you doing?”
Kara turns, smiles a bit at the confirmation that the distance between them has upset Lena as much as it has her, if the little knit between her brows is anything to go by.
“I’m making you a much-needed palate cleanser,” she informs her as she bends down to grab a cup from a cabinet. “Keep talking, I’m listening.”
Lena lets out a noise that’s very much like a sniffle and a chuckle combined. “She’ll be suspended from the internship for lack of ethics.”
Kara hums, fills the cup with water from the kettle, puts a teabag into it. “I’m sorry,” she says, now going to grab a plate. “I know how excited you were about sharing your science with someone new.”
Lena sighs bigly, letting some tension free from her shoulders. “Serves me right, I suppose.”
Kara pauses putting the finishing touches on Lena’s plate to look at her with a deep frown on her face. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” Lena answers, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I’m a Luthor. How could I let myself think someone could like me?”
Kara shoots Lena an unimpressed glare.
“What? It’s true.”
With the plate and the cup in each of her hands, Kara makes her way towards Lena’s seat. “It’s not,” she tells her earnestly, awfully familiar with the beginnings of Lena’s negative thought spirals, all too similar to her own. “Here you go,” she redirects, settings her freshly-made gift on the empty counter space beside her. “Mint tea and orange-cardamom pound cake.”
Lena’s brow furrows slightly. “I thought you’d only have these until September.”
Kara bites her lip, feels a slight warmth flooding her cheeks. “I made some extras for you. I was gonna give them to you on Friday, but… I think the occasion takes the cake.”
Lena looks away and rolls her eyes, but Kara can see the way the corners of her lips lift up into a badly contained smile. “Thank you.”
The mere sight of joy on Lena’s face rubs off on Kara golden midday sun rays. “You’re very welcome,” she answers softly, leaning her elbow on the counter and resting her chin on her palm. Suddenly, her and Lena’s faces are only a few inches apart.
For a moment, a sort of electric pull that travels from Kara’s gut all the way to her beating heart dares her to ignore all her self-imposed inhibitions and just indulge her basest desire. It should scare her, the fact that if she only moved forward the width of one of the counter tiles, Lena and she would be kissing, but instead, all she can feel is a weirdly comfortable kind of thrill, as if life had been leading her to take this leap all along. She leans forward, ever so slightly, and Lena’s lips part, and her eyelashes flutter like flower petals in spring, and Kara can feel her breath on her lips, soft and almost quivery, and then—
Lena huffs and turns to face her plate again. It’s as if a floodlight hit Kara, whose skin feels as if it’d been drenched in ice water in the middle of Antarctica, right in the stupid eyes. What the hell was she thinking?
Lena takes a hurried bite of the cake, chews it without taking her eyes off the counter. In the face of the silence, Kara opens her mouth to say… something, to try and fix the awful atmospheric pressure that’s flooded now the cold, deserted coffee shop, but a hushed buzz coming from Lena’s front pocket interrupts her.
She jumps a bit. Then, with a slight furrow in her brows, she fishes her phone out of her coat. Her eyes widen at the screen.
“Shit,” she says, standing up from her seat while reaching up to shield Kara’s view from the remnants of chewed food still in her mouth. “I… was supposed to meet Jack at school for our project half an hour ago.”
Kara blinks; her brows go up. “Oh.” She pushes herself off the counter, tucks her hair behind her ears, untucks it. “Um, go. I’ll… save this for you.”
Lena winces, pausing from tying the belt of her coat to say, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. How about— Uh, would you maybe wanna come by tonight? We could, like, bake something and watch Star Trek and just, uh, have a sleepover.”
It escapes Kara, why she’d make such a quotidian request when she’s just dropped a bomb between herself and Lena, but Lena’s face doesn’t read discomfort or outrage in the slightest. She nods, discreetly excited as ever, a small smile tugging at her gorgeous, haunting lips.
“I’d like that.”
At that, a small breath escapes Kara’s lips, in tandem with a slightly incredulous smile. She’d like that. Blinking a couple times to try and re-center herself, Kara moves to the corner of the bar to let Lena out and then, leaning against the outside of the bar, she watches her go.
Mindlessly, she starts chewing on her lip, twirling a strand of her hair. It’s funny—the normality of Lena’s reaction should annul her worry, but it settles in her insides like a hard block of ice, because she knows her, knows better. What if all it took to wreck her trust was a thoughtless split second? What if she only accepted the request to keep up appearances before starting to plan a speech to (rightfully) leave Kara for good?
Kara’s hair wraps tighter around her finger, and her stomach feels like it’s knotting in the same way, flooding with a different pang of need, sturdier, deeper. Right when Lena’s grabbed the handle of the door, she chooses to give in.
“Hey, Lena?” she calls. Lena turns, brows raised slightly, attentive. “It really isn’t true, what you said about someone liking you. You deserve the world. More than it. The universe. And whatever else is beyond it.” She swallows, cursing the slithery heat crawling in her stomach, her chest, her cheeks. “Alright?”
Lena’s eyes are so far away, and still, Kara feels the depth of her gaze as intensely as she did back together at the counter, a green-black beacon cutting a tender, open path right through to her heart. There’s an undercurrent of that perplexing melancholy in her eyes, but mostly, they’re glossed over with a bright softness, the kind she dons when she’s reading Kara’s essays or relating conference by one of her favorite professors. Kara can’t really compute its logic, but she chooses to hope it’s real. It’s okay, Lena’s look might be saying. You didn’t fuck up.
“Alright,” she finally answers, soft and sweet, and then she walks away.
The door closes behind Lena, and Kara lets out a groan of self-hatred so visceral it could very well melt her right onto the floor.
***
“Okay, that’s it,” Alex blurts out, letting herself fall onto the huge gray beanbag Kara’s sitting on, right beside her. It makes her bounce; she has to adjust her grip on her bowl to keep her dessert from spilling on Eliza’s upholstery. “What is it?”
Kara frowns at her sister, pressing her phone screen against her chest. She was in the middle of rereading her and Lena’s old texts, thanks very much. “What?”
“What?” Alex mimics with a deeper affect. “You’ve barely touched your—” she gestures to Kara’s food with thinly-veiled sisterly disgust “—Pop Tart soup… thing.”
Not a word of Kara’s earlier disaster has been uttered.
Lena showed up at her house with a box of chai tea and a slightly sheepish I thought we could make cookies, and despite Kara’s awfully careful demeanor and abundance of awkward, not-at-all sly anxiety stares, there was never a single clue that could acknowledge the possible existence of discomfort in Lena’s being. They beat butter and sugar together and scooped balls of dough onto the tray in a haze of friendly small talk, and it should’ve put Kara completely at ease, but, really, each smile and giggle made her more and more guilty. In her head, she committed a behemoth of a misstep. Why was Lena normal about it?
After the cookies were done, Kara’s mind continued to tie itself into knots, each tighter bite after bite of gooey goodness. They watched a few episodes of Star Trek, sitting close together before the laptop on Kara’s bed, and then Lena fell asleep beside her, all quiet breaths and lovely, peaceful expression on her porcelain face.
It didn’t seem like something a shocked, disturbed person would do in the face of someone who transgressed their boundaries. In fact, it dangerously resembled what a person who would very enthusiastically reciprocate a kiss would act like around the object of their desire.
So… why did she turn away?
It was too much for Kara, hypothesizing about the eclectic skein of feelings inside Lena’s tender, guarded heart, so she headed downstairs to try and sort her own clashing stances out. She really didn’t feel like unleashing all that mortifying information anywhere outside the dark, slimy crevices of her brain, but with Alex, whose track record of giving fantastic advice outlines her like a divine, glittery aura, sitting curiously right next to her…
Fuck it, Kara might as well spill it now.
“Okay! Okay, but you have to promise you won’t repeat anything you hear outside of this room, okay?”
Alex resists a scoff, badly. “Okay.”
“Say it!”
“Okay, I promise I won’t repeat anything. Jesus.”
Kara nods once, serious and sober. “Right.” She shifts in her seat, propping her bowl on her now-bent leg so she can face her sister head-on. “Well. Do you… like, think, uh… that, um, Lena might… like me?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’ve been friends for years and she comes over all the time, why wouldn’t she—"
“No, not— Do you think she might, like…” Kara lowers her voice. Lena’s upstairs, she might hear. “Like me? Like… seriously?”
Alex’s brows furrow a bit and her demeanor stills. Yeah, Kara thinks in response, it is a big deal.
“Why are you asking?”
Kara takes a deep breath, adjusting her position on the beanbag. She runs a hand through her hair, twirls the ends of it around her finger. “We… Well, I kinda, like, almost kissed her, so.”
Alex sputters before finally asking, “What?”
“I know, I don’t know what came over me! I just… It felt like… I mean, she was— A girl she was interning with tried to steal her work. She was very disappointed and angry about it, because they had started to get kinda close. And… I don’t know, I just thought, She deserves so much; I would never make her feel that way, and— I went for it.
“And for a second I thought she was gonna go with it, but then she turned away, and… neither of us has brought it up since. But she’s— Like, she’s acting— I mean, you saw her, it’s like nothing ever happened. So… I don’t know. Now I’m thinking maybe I didn’t fuck up that much after all. Because…” Something jittery and hot drops and twirls in Kara’s belly. She looks down at her lap; a small, rogue smile tugs at the corners of her lips. “I do like her, Alex. A lot. But… the messages are weird.”
Immediately, Alex shrugs. “Well, tell her, then. Talk about it.”
“What, and… just— actually fuck everything up and never see her again?”
“You seriously think she’d ghost you? Lena?”
Kara takes in a breath, but then no instant answer comes to her mind. Blowing it out, she bites her lip, rethinks for a beat while half-heartedly stirring her Pop Tart soup. “Just— You know her,” she says quietly. “You know how much she cares about trust. And I broke hers.”
“How?”
“Alex! I went in to kiss her.”
Alex actually scoffs this time, rolling her eyes and smiling a little. “Sure, you dingus,” she says, reaching out a hand to give Kara’s shoulder a gentle shove, “but consider the way she looks at you. I mean, come on.”
Kara pauses, wide-eyed. “What way?”
Alex gives one of her sardonic blinks. “Are you serious?”
“What?”
“Kara, you can’t—” Alex huffs while she shifts forward, running a hand through her hair. The smile on her face grows as she does this—clearly, she didn’t expect to be so invested in Kara’s misfortunes. “You’re telling me you almost kissed her but you haven’t noticed that she’s almost always undressing you with her eyes very time you—?”
“She— It’s— That’s not—” Kara reaches up fiercely to rub her cheek, which suddenly feels hotter, despite the cold fog on the windows. There’s building up in her gut and chest and throat, and she decides to release it by producing a petulant groan and shifting to kick Alex in the shin. “You know what? I’m not— I’m just not telling her. It’s fine. She doesn’t care, she’s acting normal; it’ll be fine.”
***
“Lena… I need to tell you something.”
Kara, true to her word, has not let a peep about her problematic findings out of her mouth for an excruciating week. She also, as expected with her usual thought-processing behavior, has not been able to concentrate on school or orders or the melodramatic docuseries Alex is forcing her to watch. Really, she hasn’t thought about much else besides the deep, oddly inviting look on Lena’s lovely wide eyes right before she turned away from Kara.
It’s intoxicating; it’s infuriating; it’s incredibly concerning. Kara will be making a caramel latte for Barb from across the street and remember the time she and Lena spent half an hour debating whether the drink’s cloyingly sweet or perfectly decadent—an event which culminated in Kara wiping whipped cream from the very latte she made for Lena to settle her point from Lena’s nose, stunning them both. She’ll be kneading the milky-white dough for the strawberries-and-cream buns on the kitchen counter and think back to the long summer afternoon where she noticed that Lena, sitting on a stool all the way across the kitchen, was curiously interested in staring at her upper arms while she prepped some sourdough loaves. Even in her room, when she’s trying to have a relaxing evening in, she’ll look over at the friendly little tabletop robot on her desk and picture the small-yet-proud smile Lena sported when she gifted it to her, back in freshman year.
Today, taking advantage of the fact that, serendipitously, the last professors Kara and Lena have both wouldn’t be able to teach their classes, the girls decided to head to the mall and catch that new romantic drama everyone’s been raving about on the internet. They talked about an unfortunate participation one of Lena’s classmates made during the bus ride, and they bought chocolate covered raisins (for Lena) and a huge cup of cola (for Kara, though Lena enjoyed a liberal share of sips, much to Kara’s endearment), and the movie really was enjoyable: at one point, when the female lead—who’d heretofore spent her life alone, wondering when she’d find a place she could fit in—was delivering a teary monologue about how she wouldn’t be able to picture such a bettered version of her life without her now-husband, Lena reached over the arm rest and let her hand find Kara’s, tenderly turning it so their fingers could intertwine.
Seeing as the afternoon had been pleasantly overcast on their way over to the theater, they agreed to walk back to Common Ground. There were orange-y, rustling leaves on the trees and the pavement, and the cool breeze surrounding the girls felt comforting and grounding on Kara’s cheeks, and, the nearer they got to the shop, the air started smelling faintly of roasted coffee beans and cinnamon-y bread.
And then, it started raining buckets.
They booked it, giggling like a couple of squawky birds, for the last few blocks left, their shoes squelching on the increasingly glossy pavement louder and louder with each of their strides. Finally, they pushed the door to the shop so zealously that the bell above it fell to the floor with a horrid metallic clank.
After regaining their breaths (and picking up the bell to find that, much to Kara’s insurmountable relief, it didn’t suffer a single scratch), they agreed to dry up a bit and wait out the rain with a couple of steamy drinks.
While she poured the coffee grounds into the espresso maker, a thought dawned on Kara, whispery and low but overwhelming as a heatwave in the middle of the hottest summer yet.
They were in the coffee shop. Alone. With nowhere else to go for at least a whole hour.
Maybe… she could finally let go.
Either Lena miraculously reciprocated Kara’s feelings and their relationship evolved into something new and precious, or she awkwardly turned her down and they truly never spoke about this fiasco again. Sure, one of those options was significantly more comfortable than the other, but neither of them seemed catastrophic.
It’d be fine!
So, she pushed the button to start the maker’s job, and, after a deep breath, turned to Lena and dropped her first bomb.
Though Kara’s heart is already pounding, Lena doesn’t seem to pick up on anything strange behind her words. Drying her hair with a hand towel, she looks at her expectantly for a few seconds. When Kara continues to stare at her with wide eyes and a slightly slack jaw, though, she says a delicate, “Okay. What is it?”
Kara takes another quick breath, willing the shooting energies in her stomach to tame themselves. “I’m sorry. About last week,” she answers, twisting her hands together tightly. “I wasn’t thinking, and I just— followed a weird impulse, because… Uh, the— the truth is, I… kinda like you. As more than a friend. And I don’t expect you to feel okay with that! I know I probably made you crazy uncomfortable, and I’m— Truly, I’m so, so sorry. It’s— Really, it was just a crazy, weird hunch, and it won’t happen again, but I— I don’t know, I felt like you should know about it, for, like, the sake of transparency?”
She shifts her weight, running a hand through her damp hair. Her fingers get caught in the rain-soaked strands, so she pulls her hand away and shoves it—and the other one, for good measure—into her hoodie pockets.
“Um, anyway, I don’t know what I’m saying,” she chuckles, wishing more than anything to melt and fuse to the floor. “Just, it’s okay if you don’t feel the same. I just… wanted you to know. So you can… assess your options, I guess.”
For a moment, only the rumble of the coffee machine, the raucous pitter-patter of the rain, and the gushing lub-dub of Kara’s racing heart fill the wide, empty room.
Then, Lena’s brows furrow ever so slightly, but her expression isn’t one of disgust or scorn or outrage. It’s a bit worried, yes, but, mostly, its soft, thoughtful lines look like… relief.
“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” she says, softly.
Kara’s fists relax inside her pockets. “Really?”
Lena nods, shifting her body a bit to leave the hand towel on the counter. “I was more… taken aback.”
Kara groans, shutting her eyes tight and burying her face in her hands. “Lena, I really am—”
“No, no, not— It wasn’t— Not in a bad way. I… I just… I’ve been wanting to kiss you for so long that I guess I couldn’t believe it was real when it was finally happening.”
The espresso machine dings, and Kara feels like yelling and folding over and doing a bunch of spins all at once.
“What?”
Lena bites her lip and looks down sheepishly, starts fidgeting with her fingers. “I wanted to go for it,” she explains, “but I…” She lets the word float for a second, dense and pressing. Then, she lets out a breath. “It’s stupid.”
“No, it’s not,” Kara says, taking a step forward intently. “Please.”
Lena looks up at her and just stares for a second, her gaze tender and searching and the most vulnerable it’s been in the recent past. A pang of overwhelming tenderness hits Kara’s chest.
After a beat, Lena sighs.
“I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there.” She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I… I’d wished for you to see me that way so keenly, for so long, without any indication that you’d ever do it that I… I mean, when Andrea started… talking to me, I figured… I don’t know. I guess I thought maybe, if I tried to like her back, then I’d have her to distract me and… I’d be okay with just having you as we were.”
She takes a breath, bites her lip.
“And then… you were there. Close,” she adds. Something in her expression shifts—she’s looking down at some inexact spot on the hardwood floor, but her features soften like the first rays of sunlight after a spring rainfall, lighten up like a Morning Glory blooming at dawn. “And it was good. It was— Really, it was good, but she’d just… you know, been an asshole to me. Rightfully, I thought.” She shrugs, awfully self-deprecating. “I didn’t deserve you.”
It’s like a giant, unforgiving hand squeezed Kara’s heart to pulp. “Lena.”
“I told you it was dumb,” she retorts, smiling pitifully. She crosses her arms, looking away, though Kara can see a smidge of redness on her cheeks. After a second where she seems to consider the merits of following up on her words, she looks back to Kara with a significantly more understanding expression. “I know you like me. I know you care about me. But… I mean, with everything that was going on… I thought I was making a mistake.”
A missing piece in the eclectic puzzle of musings in Kara’s mind finally appears at that.
“So you…” she says, looking back at flashes of the couple months. Those evasive conversations, those melancholy looks, those long stretches of contemplative silence… “You were sad because of me.”
“Sad?”
“You— Yes! When you talked about Andrea, you had this… You were sad!” She takes another step to get closer to Lena, scrunching up her brows, tilting her head thoughtfully a bit. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lena shrugs, looking to the side for a moment, considering. “I don’t know. Maybe—”
“Wait, how long have you—”
“Since senior prom. When we snuck away and you bought pizza for us to eat in your truck.”
“Lena!”
“I’m sorry!” Lena laughs, and Kara laughs too, and the pressure that has been building in her chest blows away when she does. Unbelievable, isn’t it, that they’ve ended up in this predicament? “I just… Maybe I thought you’d think I was crazy? I didn’t want things to change. I… I don’t think I could take it. If you… If I did something to drive you away.”
Kara shakes her head, taking another step forward. She’s close enough to Lena now that she can reach out and pull her hand out from her crossed arms, hold it between both of her own. “I meant what I said.” When Lena’s brows furrow inquisitively, Kara clarifies: “You deserve everything good in the world. You’re smart and caring and kind and good, and just being near you makes me feel like… like I have a place where I belong—where I can be. How could I ever want to give you up?”
Lena’s lips tighten into a small, bright smile, and her cheeks become tinted with a lovely glowy red, and a little chuckle escapes her, tender and airy and small, almost imperceptibly.
“What?” Kara asks, sweet.
“How can you say all that and still be shocked I want to kiss you?”
Kara’s jaw works for a couple seconds, but the firework sparks flowing through her veins are the only thing in her body she’s aware of. Eventually, though, she settles on speaking the one train of thought of utmost importance for this moment.
“So… you like me. Like like me.”
Lena looks up at her, eyes sparkling like clear sea glass. “Yes.”
“And you…” Kara continues, tracing the lines of Lena’s palm with her index. “You’d be comfortable if I went in to kiss you again.”
When Lena giggles, warm light flutters in Kara’s belly. “Very much so. Thrilled, in fact.”
“So,” Kara drawls out, leaning forward just a few inches, enough so she can feel it when Lena lets out an expectant puff of air, “do you feel like having a do-over?”
This time it’s Lena who dares to make the move, and this time, she commits to it fully. Her lips feel warm and soft on Kara’s, and she tastes of rain and butter popcorn. When, smiling, she licks and bites Kara’s lower lip, a zip of electricity travels from Kara’s chest to her core and, for a moment, makes her knees feel like they’ll liquefy. Emboldened, glowing, Kara brings her hands up to cradle Lena’s face, plush, delicate skin beneath her palms, and Lena giggles and rests her own reverently on Kara’s arms, and, for a moment that stretches on for what feels like forever, only Lena’s lips, Lena’s warmth, Lena’s joy, and the splashing storm outside exist in the world.
As they wander into the apartment hand in hand to have their steamy coffees in front of the TV, Kara feels so giddy she might as well be floating up the stairs.
***
A week later, when they meet their friends for brunch, Kara and Lena show up together in the truck, donning sweaters and jackets that match the orange-red leaves on the pavement. Lena’s carrying a tall paper coffee cup that, next to a drawing of two little hearts standing on a ringed planet, reads I love you to all the way to Saturn! in her hand. When Alex spots it, she cheers so loudly that one of the waiters flinches, and, as she apologizes sheepishly, all Kara can do is grin and grin and grin.
Lena’s hand feels chilly, when it intertwines with hers. Good thing she’s not fazed by cold weather.